Közterületek névadásának jellemzői Sopronban a kezdetektől napjainkig

Abstract

The urban space allows for the direct or symbolic demonstration of ideas, values and political power (NIKITSCHER 2014). The goal of this article is to review the characteristics and
motivations of naming roads and squares in Sopron.
The generally prescribed naming of public areas in Hungary begins with II. József's
reign, which was made necessary by taking stock of the population's obligations to the
state (taxation, military service). Prior to this, with the development of state power -
mainly in order to clarify and record property relations - the naming of geographical
points and territorial units of the space had already developed.
The local administrative authority exercising control over the settlement has the right
to name the public areas. Being an act of exercising power, naming depends heavily on the
national and local political power relations of the given period.
In the initial period of organization into a unified state, the official language of administration in our country was Latin. The first topographical names - as in the case of
Sopron - appeared in Latin texts.
The German names appear in Sopron in the 13-14th century. After the extinction
of the Árpád-house, they became permanent for a long time by belonging to the Habsburg
empire.
The German-language hegemony was broken during the Reformation. Primarily by
translating and explaining German names into Hungarian. Retaliation after the suppression of the 1848-49 revolution and war of independence temporarily reversed the process.
With the compromise, as a result of the national language use policy that followed, the
city management in Sopron legalized bilingualism (Hungarian and German together).
The influence of current politics is strongly felt in the naming of the period of the two
world wars. It indicates: - preserving the memory of the Trianon mutilation of the country
with the Hungarian names of the annexed villages; – to prove the identity of the power,
outstanding historical personalities and creative artists of the past, - recently, the use of
the names of political actors serving power.
The goal of the coalition government, the party-state system, is to completely break
with the past, to overwrite all names reminiscent of it, almost exclusively by putting the
vanguards of the communist idea in the foreground.
With the change of regime 1990, the renaming of public areas is enforced for the second time, erasing the traces of the previous political course and rehabilitating those who
were undeservedly erased. A new element is the avoidance of the names of foreign persons,
with the strengthening of local patriotism, the preference for notable individuals, scientists, and artists of the city, as a declaration of identity, bilingualism (Hungarian and
German) on certain streets of the historic city-core. The central power is strengthened of persons, concepts and symbols connected to autocratic regimes of the 2